DAVAO CITY—The City Health Office is urging the city council to penalize household owners whose house are found to be breeding grounds of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, CHO chief, Dr. Josephine Villafuerte, announced.
Villafuerte said they needed an ordinance to compel Dabawenyos to keep their backyards dry and dengue-free.
Eliminating the breeding grounds for the pest will dramatically reduce the cases of dengue fever in the city, she said.
Villafuerte said the people need to be threatened with penalties so that they will follow the laws, such as the anti-smoking ordinance of the city, which curtails the smoking habits of the Dabawenyos.
In 2004, an anti-dengue ordinance was sponsored by former city council committee on health chairman, councilor Bernard Al-ag, but it did not pass the 3rd reading due to several questions on the provision and penalties.
“We will not be intruding on the privacy of the home owners, we will just see if the houses are properly cleaned and kept dry,” Villafuerte said.
Earlier, the city council declined to pass anti-dengue ordinance because they saw no reason to penalize the victims of the dengue virus, said city councilor Mary Joselle Villafuerte.
The councilor said there was no need to create an anti-dengue ordinance because the 4 o’clock cleaning habit was the priority of the city council.
“The proposed ordinance is based on punishment, and I as a doctor I don’t want to punish people who are suffering from dengue. Right now, we would like to revisit the proposed ordinance and probably make it more like an incentive-based [legislation],” the councilor added.